Homemade Holiday Gifts Ideas

Giving homemade holiday gifts is a wonderful way to show the recipients that you are thinking about them. In today's world, it can be difficult to find the right things to buy people, but handmade gifts never go out of style.

You may think that only people who know how to knit or have a whole bunch of craft tools around can make gifts. This isn't true. With a little shopping and some creativity, you can make great gifts for everyone on your list.

If you are making homemade holiday gifts for family or close friends, pictures and photographs are a great starting point. Too many families complain about not having pictures of other members around during the holidays.

Framing Artwork

When you are making handmade gifts for grandparents or other close relatives, framing a piece of artwork your children drew for them is a great idea.

You will need:

• Heavy duty paper (to last longer)
• Crayons, markers, or paint (whichever your child wants to work with)
• Acid-free tape or glue
• Frame
• Mat (optional)

Have your child create their picture on the heavy duty paper. Tell them who their homemade holiday gifts are for so they can personalize it if they want. Allow it some time to dry if markers or paint was used.

Once it is dry, take the acid-free tape or glue and put a little on each corner of the picture. You don't need a lot of adhesive, just enough to keep the picture from slipping.

Center the picture on the backing of the picture frame, then place the clear pane over it. Put the frame together, and you're done!

While this may not seem like a very creative project, you would be amazed how important little things like this are to family members.

Some other home made holiday gifts that you can make are ornaments. Again, there is no end to the options you have. Here are a few family-friendly ornament projects you can do.

Jar Lid Ornaments

These are quaint ornaments you can make as homemade holiday gifts, and they are a great way to recycle as well.

You will need:

• Jar lids of various sizes (Metal is best because they look better than plastic.)
• Spray paint
• Construction paper
• Marker
• Photo-safe adhesive
• A variety of pictures

The pictures you use can be of many things. If you plan ahead, you can take pictures of your family and use them for some of these homemade holiday gifts. If you want to send a set of these ornaments, having a couple with photos of the family and a few with other pictures is a good idea.

Some people who make these handmade gifts use old holiday cards. They find cards that have nice holiday pictures, and instead of throwing them out, they cut out the pictures and make ornaments out of them.

The first thing you should do is to spray paint the jar lids. If they are festive colors and don't need to be sprayed, that's great, but if they need to be covered, do this early so they have plenty of time to dry.

Take a picture you have chosen for making these homemade holiday gifts and look at what you want to cut out of it. Find a jar lid that will hold that part of the picture and set it over the picture. Using a pencil, lightly draw a circle around the edge of the jar lid. This will make it much easier to cut the picture to the perfect size.

Once you cut out the picture, test fit it into the jar lid. Trim it down if you need to.

Then you can put adhesive on the back of the picture and stick it into the lid.

If you want, you can write out a message on the construction paper, and glue it to the back of the jar lid.

For hanging the ornament, some people glue a loop of ribbon to the back under the paper. Other people drill a hole at the top of the lid and punch a hole in the picture.

Brightly colored pipe cleaners and beads are also great for making ornaments. Twist the pipe cleaners into the holiday shapes that you want, and thread beads onto them to make them sparkle. This type of ornament is cheap and easy to make.

Save Money While Giving Great Gifts

One of the very best things about making homemade holiday gifts is that it is generally cheaper than buying gifts for everyone. It is more time-consuming, but the sentimental value of the handmade gifts will be higher, and you will feel great for making them.

We hope you enjoyed our suggestions for homemade holiday gifts. If you like these suggestions or have some of your own, we would love to see your comments! Please feel free to Show us your own homemade gift ideas here.